


Bronze

by RedTwice



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dragons, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Anxiety, Depression, Dragon Riders, Fluff, Friendship, M/M, Magic, More tags to be added, POV Katsuki Yuuri, Rating May Change, Romance, Self-Doubt, The skaters are dragon riders, Unreliable Narrator, YOI Fantasy Week
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2019-02-03 19:05:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12754347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedTwice/pseuds/RedTwice
Summary: “I want to be a dragon rider,” Yuuri whispered, and his voice was lost in the dragons’ wind-wake that tore leaves from the early-autumn trees and pulled at the clothes of the villagers around him. “I want to be like you, Viktor.”In which Vicchan is a dragon, Yuuri is his dragon rider, and Yuuri's childhood hero Viktor Nikiforov somehow becomes his mentor.





	1. Prologue

The first time Yuuri met Viktor Nikiforov, the sea was screaming.

The air above Hasetsu’s beach was heavy, the clouds unnaturally dark for mid-morning autumn. Waves lapped at the shore, peaking and retreating in an unnaturally irregular pattern. A tiny form knelt among the shallows, black hair whipping in the wind as sea-salt water pulled at his legs, and he stared into the ocean his village had fished for generations.

The sea serpent was massive. It was bigger than any boat he had ever seen, bigger than the largest hall in his village, bigger than the cliffs that hedged the far corners of the beach. The serpent was _massive_ , and it was a cold, deep turquoise that melted into the storm of the ocean.

Its head was cavernously open around a jaw that could swallow his family’s entire home in one bite. It was writhing, spitting water from the deep of its mouth, its body thick and sinuous and scaled, its tail whipping back and forth and whisking torrents of ice white spray into the air.

It was _screaming_ , so loud and fierce that the air seemed to quiver, and when the scream finally died away, another crying voice rose through the ringing aftermath.

“-back! Yuuri, _Yuuri_ , get back here, _now!_ _Yuuri!_ ”

Yuuri’s eyes were fixed, magnetised, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t look away from the blood that dripped from teeth the size of a grown pine, from the lemon-yellow eyes that were piercing even from this broad distance-

Warm hands gripped his arm, pulling him from the water and carrying him away with a crunch of wet sand. It was as if a trance had been broken and Yuuri burst into motion, straining against his captor.

“Hey – wait – _no!_ ” Yuuri cried, pushing desperately against the firm, strong embrace. “No, wait, I want – I wanna see, I want – _Mari_ , let me-!”

His words drowned as another splitting shriek shuddered through the beach. Mari’s fumbling run stuttered as she cried and hunched forward, one hand curled to protect her ear, the other grasping at Yuuri’s squirming shoulders.

“ _No_ , Yuuri – it’s too dangerous, we need to go, we need to get to safety-” Mari was shouting hoarsely over the screams of the serpent, and Yuuri wasn’t listening, because-

“Mari, _there’s dragons!_ ”

A deep, inhuman roar rumbled over the beach like intensely deep thunder. Yuuri gasped, clutching his sister’s arm where it had shifted to press across his chest, and the sound shook through him in an intimate shudder.

Suspended above the spitting serpent was a horrifically beautiful dragon, a dark and gorgeous beast. Its wings stretched and stretched, massive and golden brown, and they dominated the sky as the beast hung in the air. The wings were beating gusts of wind so powerful that even from so far below, Yuuri could feel his hair ruffling through the deep _whumphs_ of each stroke.

Another roar, another trembling shake through Yuuri’s lungs as Mari carried him – dragged him – away from the treacherous shore, and then the dark of the clouds was split apart by a column of white-yellow flame, rushing from the dragon’s mouth in a thick column.

The serpent shrieked as the flesh behind its head was seared. This time, even Yuuri cringed and desperately plugged his ringing ears against the sound.

The dragon’s fire was bitten off, the beast itself moving away, higher, circling around. The quiet of the moment struck Yuuri as Mari scrambled over a grassy dune, towards a wood-plank fishing hut that was cradled by the husks of red-leaved trees. The serpent had dipped under the waves, the golden dragon was a smudge between heavy clouds – and in the silence, Yuuri could hear another slowly repeating _whumph_ , distant, like a whisper, but growing louder and faster with every passing second-

And from above the cover of the fishing hut burst a blue-green length of scales that stretched on and on and on, so low to the ground that Yuuri could see every sharp claw where it was curled up against the _second dragon’s_ stomach. Almost-translucent wings shielded the sky from horizon to horizon as the dragon swooped over the village, casting a broad and lingering shadow. A strong current of air buffeted Mari, sending her yelping to her knees with Yuuri shielded beneath her, until the dragon finally passed and the last tuft of its lightly feathered tail slipped from overhead to join the battle over the sea.

“ _Wow_ ,” Yuuri whispered, eyes wide and bright over Mari’s shoulder as the dragon met its peer in the sky, and then they were turning, flanking the serpent which had re-emerged from the waves, and another roar was building, rolling across the beach, and-

The scene slipped away, hidden by the dunes and the hut and the trees.

“No – wait, _Mari_ ,” Yuuri whined, struggling again, but Mari only shushed him, grasping the back of his head and running awkwardly along the beaten mud path. “I want to _see_ , I want to-”

“Yuuri, I’m sorry, but we have to _leave_ , we have to go, you’re not safe, we need to-” Mari was panicking. Her voice was threatening to slip into hysterics, and Yuuri finally turned from the vanishing glimpses of the battle, turned to take in his sister’s tear streaked face, the tiny sliver of blood about her ear, the way her face was pale from shock, but her cheeks flushed with desperation. “We need to find _okaasan_ , o- _otousan_ , we need to make sure they’re alright.”

A cold shock flooded through Yuuri at the thought that his mother, his father, _his parents might not be alright_. He had been so struck by the terrible beauty of the battle before him that all other thoughts had vanished. Fear came then, a deep, sick feeling in his gut that Yuuri had never felt before. What if they were too late, what if his mother and father were-?

Yuuri wasn’t fighting anymore. Yuuri, young and pale and wrapped in a wet mud-brown _yukata_ of cheaply dyed linen, was gripping Mari, burying his head into her shoulder and hoping, praying that they would make it to their parents in time.

Mari was running, slipping in her sandals until she gritted her teeth and kicked them off. She ran twice as fast now, out of the thin brush, through the wooden gate framed by the first clay tiled homes, along the narrow stone paths that snaked between the maze of houses, past the abandoned racks of drying fish, past the heaps of half-knotted fishing net, past the empty town. They broke from the core knot of the village, running through trees that became thicker, up a slope that became steeper, along a path that became muddier and rougher.

Yuuri’s face was cold, his fingers red from gripping Mari’s shoulders, and his ears ringing with the _shrieks_ and _roars_ that washed over them at intervals, shocking them every time with their ferocity and strength. And then-

 _…whumph_.

 _whumph_.

 _Whumph_.

The trees around them shuddered against the wind, the leaves fluttering at the edge of their fragile grips, long grass stirring at another gust, another deep beat of air from the sky-

 _Another dragon_.

The third was beautiful; a deep, consuming black, with a hint of crimson-red at the edge of each scale, a stunning vision that Yuuri could only glimpse through gaps in the branches above him. It passed above the path that Mari ran along, and the dragon was so big and so close to the ground that it took a full ten seconds for it to pass from snout to tail. For every one of those ten seconds, Yuuri could not bring himself to look away.

The last black-red scale vanished and Mari cried out, curling around Yuuri as the wind-gust wake of the dragon tore a half rotted tree from its roots to shatter across their path and leave dirty, muddy streaks over their faces and clothes.

“C’mon, _c’mon_ ,” Mari shook herself right, hiking Yuuri a little higher on her hip and scrambling over the damp wood, resuming her hard pace. “We’re almost there,” she panted. Yuuri bounced as she ran, gripping and hoping. “We’re almost there, we’re almost there, we’re almost there-”

Yuuri twisted in Mari’s arms, caught sight of a familiar string of paper lanterns in the bristle, and then Mari sobbed in relief. The trees broke open into steep wooden stairs, and above those steps was a clearing, and nestled in that clearing, at the base of the mountain and half-hidden by a mess of half-tamed forest, was a single-story home of wood panels and paper screens and curled clay eaves.

Yuuri gasped as Mari climbed those steps, as the garden and tended ferns came into sight, with more low-hanging lanterns to guide visitors into the inn, and the ever-present curl of steam from behind stone walls that protected the natural hot spring of the hills.

And kneeling on the smooth wooden veranda, hands shaking as she packed and unpacked and re-packed her basket again, was Hiroko.

“ _Okaasan_ ,” Mari choked out, and Yuuri finally slid from her arms as they raced together across the well-worn earth, onto flat stones that marked a pathway to the door, to their mother.

Hiroko’s eyes were red-ringed, hidden behind spindly glasses, and she was gasping with relief as she raised her head to see her children _safe_.

“ _Mari_ , Yuuri, you’re alright,” Hiroko stumbled to her feet, stumbled down the stairs, stumbled into Mari’s arms and then knelt to scoop Yuuri up, squeezing him so tight that the breath wheezed from Yuuri’s chest. “You’re alright, you’re okay, thank the gods, you’re _okay_.” Hiroko was crying, heavy wet tears that tore at Yuuri, and made him bury his nose in his mother’s neck, trembling.

At once a shriek and a roar split the air in a horrible echo, and Hiroko flinched, her hands curling around each child tightly. Yuuri turned in his mother’s and sister’s arms, looking out beyond the worn wooden steps that led to the inn, beyond the treetop leaves, beyond the unnaturally quiet seaside village, and-

Even from this distance, the serpent was unfathomably big. Even from this distance, Yuuri could still see its outline clearly, could still see its jaws snapping as two dragons flitted around it- _two? I thought there were three-_

 _Whumph_.

The ground trembled, Yuuri would swear for years to come that the ground _trembled_ as a brown-gold mass of leg and claw crunched into a fifty-year-old oak tree like it was straw. Wings gentled the fall with gusts of air strong enough to rip the headband from Mari’s brow, to send Hiroko’s basket of clothes and keepsakes tumbling across the wood of the _en_ , to tear open the paper walls of the inn’s guest rooms.

A second hind leg cracked into the bark of a pine tree, and then two slender forelegs as thick as the buckling pine curled over the edge of the clearing, each paw glinting with claws that would have rivaled Yuuri’s legs in length if they weren’t retracted into the flesh of each toe with care.

And then a long, long neck curled forward and down, a neck thicker than Hiroko was tall, peaked with a row of honey-coloured spikes, and accented with earth-brown feathers. The neck curled down, and the head – the face, the _teeth_ , the whiskers, the massive, massive eyes – came closer and closer- 

The jaw of the dragon skimmed the grass of the clearing, its breath loud and heavy with the excursion of the flight, and with the neck finally depressed against the ground, a lithe body at the base of the dragon’s neck came into view.

Yuuri couldn’t help gasping, couldn’t stop himself from stepping from the circle of his mother’s arms just a little.

The slim rider was just a little shorter than the spikes of their dragon’s spine, and they stood with an arm curled around one for balance. They wore dark protective leather armour, strapped with pouches and knives, and they boasted a sleek bow at their back. Their hair, gathered at the back of their neck in a messy bun, was a stunning, stunning silver.

A thick gold-brown foreleg extended carefully, providing an uneven length of scale and muscle for the rider to slide down with practiced ease.

“Are you alright?” the rider was approaching fast with smooth and confident strides, speaking in simple, awkwardly accented Japanese. His voice was gentle, soothing, and young. “Are you hurt, any of you?”

Hiroko, curling Mari under her arm and tugging at the back of Yuuri’s clothes, opened her mouth to answer, but-

 _Ffthromphh_.

Mari flinched back, squeaking a little at the sudden, harsh puff of breath from the dragon. Curls of hot air distorted their view over the forest and shifted the silvery hair of the rider as they – _he_ – turned to glance at his dragon quickly.

“We’re okay,” Yuuri finally, finally couldn’t hold back anymore. Ignoring the urgently hissed “ _Yuuri!”_ from behind him, Yuuri squirmed from his mother’s hand and stepped forward, his heartbeat throbbing in his chest and throat as his eyes strayed to the _dragon_ that was sitting beside his house. “I mean – Mari’s sort of hurt, her ear’s bleeding a little bit, but mostly we’re okay. Are you – are you _really_ a dragon rider?”

The young man’s eyes glanced to Yuuri’s mother and sister, but returned to Yuuri – and then softened.

“Yes. My name is Viktor,” Viktor spoke with quiet, peaceful authority, and he was close enough now that Yuuri had to tilt his head back to see Viktor’s face, to see those rich blue eyes staring down at him. “We need to leave, now. Will you and your family come with me? My Makkachin will take you to safety, so the _lingwil_ _óke_ can’t get you.”

A shiver ran down Yuuri’s spine, but it wasn’t at the mention of the sea serpent.

“Makkachin,” Yuuri repeated quietly, twisting his hands, and glancing between Viktor, the dragon, Viktor, the dragon- “Is that – is that their name?”

Viktor’s eyes creased just a little as he smiled.

“Yes, that's her name. My Makkachin. Would you like to ride her?”

This was a dream. This had to be a dream, one of the  _best_ dreams where he was _flying_ , because there couldn’t be a dragon in his home, there couldn’t be a dragon rider here, there couldn’t be, Yuuri wasn’t ever this _lucky_ -

“Please,” Viktor voice rose to speak to Hiroko and Mari as well, as calm and reassuring as ever. “My dragon will not hurt you. My fellow rider saw you as he passed over the village – you three are the last of the villagers who have not been taken to the mountain already. Let me take you as well, please - so that you will be safe.”

Yuuri was squirming, bouncing on the heels of his feet, and he turned to meet his mother’s eyes plaintively, begging without words-

“I can’t-” Hiroko finally managed, and Yuuri didn’t wilt in disappointment, he _didn’t_ \- “My husband, I haven’t found him _-_ ”

His father. Yuuri froze, his breath caught, _where was his father_ -

“He might already be on the mountain, for all we know,” Viktor voice soothed them, but there was a touch of urgency in his tone now, and the shrieks from the sea were becoming louder than ever. “Please, _okusan_. We don’t have much time.” Viktor reached out, offering a worn leather palm to Yuuri, and Yuuri didn’t hesitate, couldn’t hesitate – he reached out with dirty fingertips and took Viktor's warm hand, looking over his shoulder and pleading with his eyes for his mother to follow.

Hiroko was cringing, looking over to the empty basket and the items strewn about the tattered inn, and Yuuri could see that she was about to hesitate again, delay again, but then a _scream_ came, splitting the air with hateful sound, and Yuuri glimpsed past Viktor to see the serpent rearing, to see water hissing hundreds of feet away, to see two dragons fighting with talons and fire and dexterous speed. The serpent was closer now, it was almost to the shore-

“Come, _now!_ ” Viktor finally snapped, and he scooped Yuuri into the fold of one arm – the leather of his armour was thick and butter-soft, smooth to the touch – before marching forward and pressing his other arm around Hiroko’s shoulders. Viktor led her and Mari across the clearing despite her weak protests, and in no time at all they were standing at the base of Makkachin’s foreleg.

“Up, quickly!” With a push from Viktor and a frightened but reassuring look from Hiroko, Mari was clambering on first, gripping scales for balance and slipping clumsily. Hiroko clumsily followed, and then finally Viktor swung himself up, Yuuri still held tight in his arms.

The dragon was _warm_. Warm and moving and alive, Yuuri found, when he reached out to reverently touch a scale the size of his thigh.

They climbed to the peak of the dragon’s back, Viktor catching Hiroko when she stuttered over the shoulder bone, and Yuuri watched as the ground grew further and further away, becoming a distant and terrifying thing.

“Here, sit, please,” Viktor ushered Hiroko and Mari into a broad leather saddle that was strapped across the hollow at the base of the dragon’s neck. Mari was forced to hike her skirts up, to sit with her legs splayed wide across the arch of the dragon’s spine, and Hiroko took a seat behind her, holding her daughter’s waist and shoulders tightly. Viktor crouched to hastily fasten a handful of straps about their waists and thighs, before kneeling at their back. He curled around Yuuri tightly, warmly, and he smelled like sandalwood and sweat.

Makkachin’s breath shifted the scales beneath their feet, shifted the edge of the leather saddle, shifted _them_ as they swayed against the movement of her chest.

“Hold these,” Viktor said, finally pressing a knotted rope into each of their hands, ropes that were tethered to the front of the saddle, short and rough and sturdy. “Hold tight, lean forward, and _don’t let go_.”

“What if _otousan_ isn’t there?” Yuuri asked quietly. The serpent’s shriek sounded across the beach and the village and the hills, and Viktor glanced in the direction of the ocean, his face settling into something hard and cold. “Viktor- _san_?”

“Hold _tight_ ,” Viktor said shortly.

The wings. The wings drew up around them, shifting with a sighing rush, spreading out, out, out – and Makkachin’s chest was rising, too, as her legs straightened. Yuuri yelped and held onto his knot with white fingers, pulling himself down even as Makkachin stood taller and taller, twice as tall as Yuuri’s house. Yuuri could see the roof, the hot springs, he could see every house in the village, he could see-

The deep bronze wings, leathery and large, massive, spreading, spreading, spreading, overtaking Yuuri’s vision in every direction, swinging up with slow and profound energy, suddenly swooping _down_ -

The bottom dropped out of Yuuri’s stomach, his chest fell forward into the saddle, his eyes clenched closed, and he screamed as the raw, brutal, guttural force of the dragon’s push _heaved_ them off the ground, as the wings buffeted the air, as the legs snapped any remaining strength in the oak and pine they had landed on, as the earth vanished, vanished, vanished-

Mari was screaming. Hiroko was screaming. Viktor was a warm, constant strength at Yuuri’s back, an arm pressed around Yuuri’s shoulders to keep him close, still, safe.

The scream of terror – _excitement?_ – finally died in Yuuri’s throat, and through wind that whipped his hair into his face and slapped his sleeves against his arms, he finally opened eyes he hadn’t realised he’d closed.

It was beautiful.

The forest, the shore, the stretch of the blue horizon. The clouds were closer, now, heavy and grey with waiting rain, and Yuuri knew that if they climbed any higher he could have touched those clouds with his very own hands.

Makkachin was banking, listing to one side in a slow glide, and her wings pumped once more – _whumph_ – with a small, sickening swoop in her climb that left Yuuri pale, and sweating, and _alive_.

And behind him, a steady unmoving constant, was Viktor. He was tall. He was _so_ tall, kneeling over Yuuri and Hiroko and Mari, and he looked calm, in control, muscles moving under his leather armour as he responded to the minuscule shifts in Makkachin’s flight. He wasn’t tied to his dragon at all; he had only one hand resting lightly against the tall spine-spike behind him, and yet he was perfectly balanced, poised in a ready crouch.

And before the flight had even truly begun, Makkachin’s wings were pumping gently, messily slowing their ascent, drawing them down towards the plateau atop the village’s sheltering mountain.

Yuuri blinked through the bracket of Viktor’s arms, past the beating of Makkachin’s wings, down the column of Makkachin’s neck, and found that he could see a loose throng of adults and children and elderly villagers strewn about the plateau. At their approach, many of the tiny, tiny children darted back into their parents’ shadows, and even some of the taller forms retreated into the cover of trees and shrubbery.  

Makkachin touched down on the sparsest stretch of dry dirt, shifting rocks and pebbles and dust as she did, and the shudder of gravity would have thrown Yuuri from Viktor’s grasp if it weren’t for the ready, tight grip Viktor had him in. Makkachin’s wings drew back, tucking away, and Viktor leaned forward to unwrap the straps from Mari and Hiroko’s legs with deft hands.

“Go now, carefully,” Viktor said, his hands gripping each of his passengers' shaking fingers and making sure they didn’t trip as they gathered their legs beneath them and slid inelegantly towards the extended foreleg, their unconventional ladder.

At Mari’s first touch on the dry ground, a cry came from the lingering crowd of the villagers.

“ _Mari!_ ”

Yuuri’s head whipped up from where he was curled in Viktor’s arms. They slid down the bumpy surface of Makkachin’s leg, and Yuuri’s voice joined his mother’s and sister’s in joyful relief.

“ _Otousan!_ ”

“ _Anata-_ ”

“Hiroko, Mari, _Yuuri,_ ” Toshiya wasn’t crying, but he was pale and fluttering about them as they came to stand on the top of the mountain. He was smiling and gasping equally in relief, and his hands finally came out to grip Hiroko’s firmly, his eyes shimmering a little as he took in her wind-swept face, and recognised that she was unhurt.

Viktor didn’t let Yuuri’s feet touch the ground. Instead he stepped forward and passed Yuuri to Toshiya, nodding to the shorter man before he stepped back respectfully.

Even as his father’s familiar arms closed around him, Yuuri turned to watch Viktor retreat.

“Viktor- _san_!” Yuuri called, and Viktor paused from where one leg was raised to step onto Makkachin’s paw. “Are you gonna come back, after?”

Viktor’s eyes lingered on Yuuri, on the way he wasn’t shying away, on the way his father was drawing him towards the other villagers despite Yuuri’s squirming protests.

“Of course I’ll come back,” Viktor promised with an eye-creasing smile, and then he was gone – climbing Makkachin’s shoulders at twice the speed he had before, hoisting himself to kneel firmly on the broad, flat saddle without a single tie or knot to balance with. Makkachin was heaving up, her wings were drawing back, her legs pushing off the side of the mountain-

Toshiya stumbled to his knees at the weight of the wind, and by the time Yuuri had squirmed from his hold and blinked his hair away, Makkachin was gone. Within moments, she and her rider were nothing more than a fleeting flash of dusky gold that soared over the landscape of the village and its beach, that hung over the ocean and breathed fire and heat onto the approaching menace of the massive, massive sea serpent.

Yuuri pushed at his father’s grasping arms, earning him a weary “ _Yuu-ri”_ – but Toshiya eventually relented, and Yuuri eagerly darted to the overlook of the mountain, a peak of land that had been cleared of trees and that provided a stunning panorama of his village below.

A thrill of boyish, excited horror shot through Yuuri’s spine.

The serpent was on the beach.

And the serpent was _dying_.

Now that the third dragon – _Makkachin_ , Yuuri named her with a shiver of excitement – had returned to the fight, the serpent was flailing. Under billows of flame, flashing claws, and lethal whips of Makkachin’s tail, the serpent was flinching more than it was attacking, crying more than it was shrieking. The dark dragon, with red-tinged scales, was moving in sleek tandem with Makkachin and her rider, while the third sleek blue-green beast swooped about with nimble acrobatics.

And just moments later, when the serpent finally fell – when it crashed to the shore, crumpling the fisherman’s hut, shattering the shallows where Yuuri had been kneeling – the village cheered, Yuuri cheered, and the dragons roared their victory over the burned and bloodied carcass that was staining the sand red.

The dragons turned to soar over the village in a luxurious swoop, and Yuuri stumbled along the ridge of the overlook as they dawned over the edge of the mountain, desperate to catch a wisp of wind as they passed.

To catch the eyes of the young, silver-haired rider – _Viktor_ – who had saved him.

“I want to be a dragon rider,” Yuuri whispered, and his voice was lost in the dragons’ wind-wake that tore leaves from the early-autumn trees and pulled at the clothes of the villagers around him. “I want to be like you, Viktor- _san_.”

The shadows of the dragons passed, and the deep grey sky broke into thick, cleansing rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I've been working on this for the last month or so while trying to renew my enthusiasm for This Conversation (eek), and when I saw that YOI Fantasy Week had a dragon slot, I decided to submit the prologue to see if there might be any interest! I have a detailed plot outlined chapter-by-chapter to the end (for once), and I've already written the first two chapters in addition to this prologue. I may or may not delay the uploading of chapter one, depending on how much of a buffer I want to keep for myself.
> 
> Please let me know what you think, or if you've found any errors / typos (since this is currently unbeta'd)! If you'd like to come and chat, I can be found at red-twice.tumblr.com.
> 
> Special thanks is absolutely due to Suzurei, for her incredible encouragement and support <3
> 
> Thank you for reading! <3
> 
> [Edit: This work has been reuploaded, since the AO3 chewed on my first work and didn't give it a word count??]


	2. Chapter One

“Thank you, Morooka- _san_ ,” Yuuri bowed carefully, cradling the dark clay pot to his chest. “Thank you, I can’t … you know this means a lot to me.”

Morooka waved a dismissive hand, but his face was gentle.

“Don’t mention it, Katsuki- _kun_. You know I’d do this for any of our riders. Now, off! Go!”

Yuuri straightened and nodded awkwardly, taking the pot and gathering his dignity, and left the small apothecarist’s room with a painful curl of hope in his chest.

 _Maybe this time_.

The red-stone corridors were long, familiar, and thankfully empty at this late hour. Yuuri’s footsteps echoed in the vaulted ceiling, his shadow shifting as he crossed the tiny carved alcoves of yellow magelight set high into the walls. He passed the occasional wooden door, always heavy and always closed, and his fingers grew warm where they cradled the clay pot reverently.

This wasn’t what he’d imaged when he had dreamed of becoming a dragon rider.

Yuuri didn’t regret any of it, don’t get him wrong – nothing, _nothing_ could compare to that breathless moment when an earth-brown egg had warmed under his touch, when a questioning, muffled chirp had sounded through the shell, when he had seen those soft, glowing eyes for the first time.

But the years had crept on, years of quiet halls, of lingering stares, of hushed whispers, of growing isolation. His hours were spent scouring dusty scrolls and books, his days spent researching stories and cures, his nights spent crushing and mixing and praying at Morooka’s side as they tried salve after poultice after potion. It wasn’t what Yuuri had expected at all.

But Vicchan made everything worth it.

And then voices began to fade into the edge of Yuuri’s hearing, echoing from the fast-approaching junction where the city’s five key passageways met under the shadow of a magelit chandelier.

“-focus was _amazing_ , I’ve never seen anyone hold Still for so long!” a young woman was speaking amid a gentle mix of other voices, the sound of a friendly conversation. Yuuri’s steps faltered, ready to retreat – he recognised that voice – but it was already too late. Six figures emerged from the left-most corridor, dressed in matching leathers and boasting wind-swept hair that Yuuri had never had the honour to wear.

Yuuri stopped entirely, holding his breath. Without the echo of his footsteps, without the flicker of his shadow, they might not see him-

“What’s this?” The youngest of the group, with dark hair and grey eyes and a confident, cocky, self-made smirk, was speaking. Jean-Jacques’ stride slowed just a little, so that he was hanging back from the other five, and his eyes pierced Yuuri in dark amusement. His companions didn’t slow, didn’t stop, and the wash of their conversation continued obliviously. Among them was a shock of silver hair- “You’re not still bothering Morooka for his ‘remedies’, are you?”

Yuuri flushed, and cradled the pot against his soft stomach protectively.

“Maybe,” he said quietly.

Jean-Jacques snorted.

“Well, let me know when they start working,” he said, already moving away to where the other riders had moved on. “I’ll make sure to save a spot for you on our next mission!” Jean-Jacques laughed rudely, and he re-joined the others’ conversation as if he had never left, as if Yuuri hadn’t been there, as if nothing had changed.

And it hadn’t.

Yuuri breathed low, and deep. His fingertips were shaking.

 _Keep going_ , he told himself silently. _Keep going_.

The dragon’s city was large, flat, and shallow, carved into sun-warmed rock and spread out for miles in every direction. The dragon riders’ quarters were scattered across this stone city, with no more than half a dozen rooms in each of the five wards. This was by careful design and necessity, giving each chamber, rider, and dragon the space they needed without infringing on the needs of those around them.

Yuuri couldn’t hold back a bitter snort. His fingers stroked the pot once more as he stepped into the passageway of the eastern-most ward. If followed to its end, this passage would lead to the training fields. Sometimes, Yuuri wondered if the gods were being deliberately cruel.

A quarter-mile further down the stone hall, and the door to Yuuri’s quarters came into view. It was as heavy as any of the others, reaching a handful of feet above his head, and yet swinging open effortlessly on well-oiled hinges. The door closed silently and with a gentle feel of relief, as Yuuri stepped into his sanctuary.

The air was still, and quiet. Warm. _Safe_.

Yuuri’s chambers were stunningly big, as all the riders’ chambers were. The ceiling yawned above him in stone arches, the floor stretched a width of over two hundred feet from wall-to-wall, and the back end of the room was so far away that it was actually shrouded in shadow, unable to be seen clearly from the doorway.

The human sized utilities – an impressively large bed, numerous dark oak fixtures, a long writing desk that could stack fifty books and still have room to spare – looked comically miniscule. Beyond the small living area, the floor dropped away into a deep cavern, with stone-carved stairs bracketing the descent. Beneath those stairs was a small wooden door, to Yuuri’s personal facilities.

And overhanging it all, the centre of attention, was a broad, broad circle of stars framed by an opening in the ceiling, a massive hole - a sunpit - that gaped over the cavern and allowed the warm night air to sink into the room.

Nestled beneath the open-air circle, providing a gentle wash of colour and the smell of leafy ozone, was a chaos of mud and rocks and well-grown greenery that looked out of place in the otherwise interior setting. Tonight the sky was clear, but on days when it was raining the overgrown garden would be completely doused, and the room would hiss with the sound of water droplets against stone and leaf.

Yuuri rested against the door just a moment longer, gathering his fortitude, before he called silently into the depths of his consciousness.

_‘Vicchan?’_

A pleased trill sounded excitedly from within the mess of stones and leaves, and the foliage began to rustle with excited movement.

A smile finally, finally crept over Yuuri’s face.

 _‘Vicchan, I’m home!’_   he spoke again into the warmth of his mind, and a small presence brushed back excitedly.

 _‘Yuuri! Yuuri, you’re home, you’re home! You’ve been gone so long, Yuuri!’_   The rustling of the leaves grew stronger, ferns and grasses shifting noisily.

 _‘I spent the evening with Morooka-san,’_   Yuuri explained patiently, moving towards the descending staircase that ran alongs the overlooking ledge. ‘ _And this time, I have something new for us to try.’_

A happy thrill of Vicchan’s excitement sounded through their silent connection. Yuuri placed the clay pot on one of the lower steps for safekeeping as he dropped down into the cavern. Moments later, the wild grasses parted, and Vicchan bounded out in a vision of brown and gold and bronze.

Smiling, Yuuri offered a hand for his dragon’s snout to butt against, stroking the soft scales there with tender fingers. Vicchan huffed into his palm, before he darted around Yuuri in a playful circle. His golden-brown shoulders were level with Yuuri’s as he rubbed happily against Yuuri’s open, rust-coloured robe.

In some ways, Yuuri was lucky. None of the other dragons that he had seen were this playful with their riders. They couldn’t be; not when those dragons were three stories tall, and more likely to crush their riders than tease them.  

Vicchan wasn’t like the other dragons.

 _‘Morooka, Moroooka, I haven’t seen him in ages!’_ Vicchan bounced in his stride, his wings flipping out to aide his playful jump. _‘Is he coming to visit? What did you make us? Does it taste nice?’_

Yuuri reached out as Vicchan spoke, running his fingertips over the grooves of his scales, the lines of his muscles, the honey-brown spikes along his spinal ridge.

 _‘I don’t know about the taste,’_   Yuuri admitted truthfully, fishing a dirty handful of uprooted clovers from where they had caught on Vicchan’s tail. ‘ _But this time it has goji berries in it. Maybe it won’t be as bad as all the others.’_

Vicchan’s mind brushed Yuuri's with another happy warmth that had Yuuri smiling, and Yuuri finally moved back to collect the clay pot, pulling aside the lid to reveal a handful of small gauze bundles tied with tweedy rope.

 _‘Here,’_   Yuuri stepped across to the edge of the messy foliage and lowered himself to sit cross-legged on a low, flat stone that he reserved just for this purpose. _‘Let’s try this together, Vicchan.’_

Vicchan’s chest rumbled with the sound of content agreement, and he trotted over to curl against his bonded rider, with his legs and stomach flat against the sun-warmed rock, and his neck curled around Yuuri’s elbow so that his head was cradled in the circle of Yuuri’s legs.

Yuuri stroked his knuckles against Vicchan’s brow, ran his fingers along the thin strands of his whiskers, and savoured his gentle purr before reaching into the clay pot and picking out two of the gauze-tied bundles.

“We found this recipe in an old account from Norland,” Yuuri explained aloud as he unwound one of the ties, revealing a brown-red-green meal inside that was pressed into a sticky sphere the size of a crab apple. “It begins with a Prince who was the son of a beloved King. The Prince had been born in the wake of a great war, which his people had emerged from triumphant, and the Prince had only ever known peace and prosperity within his father’s lands.”

Vicchan’s eyes were half-lidded at the story – he loved stories, even the scary ones – but the dim glow of his deep golden eyes was fixed on the tiny, sweet-smelling treat cradled by the gauze in Yuuri’s hand.

“One day, an old sorcerer came to his door and cursed the Prince. The old sorcerer had lost his only son and heir in the war, and he wanted the King to know the sorrow that he had felt. The King was distraught – because with every passing day, the prince grew smaller, and smaller, and there seemed to be no end in sight.” Yuuri’s fingers traced over the lines of Vicchan’s eyelids, and he paused in the silent narration.

“Luckily, there was a witch in the castle who knew of such spells, and she told the King of a cure. Such was the nature of the old man’s hatred, it could only be overcome by humility, and kindness, and selflessness.”

Yuuri’s fingers parted a fold of gauze that had fluttered over the cure, and plucked the sphere from its nest with delicate fingers.

“Humility, the Prince found in a young serving boy who tended the rose beds.” Yuuri had spent two weeks translating that passage, and cutting rose buds from the city gardens.

“Kindness, the Prince found in a young woman who was resting under the cherry blossoms.” Another week to translate, and then a full month of waiting for the spring-pink blossoms to arrive.

“And selflessness, the Prince found in a baker who rose before everyone else in the castle, to cut thyme from the gardens for the morning bread.”

There were other ingredients, of course; the witch had demanded an intimate price from the widowed King, and the Prince had cut three lines into his smallest finger for the necessary blood to be drawn. But Vicchan didn’t need to know anything about that.

“By the time they had collected these cures, the Prince was no bigger than a thimble,” Yuuri presented the ball to Vicchan with a playful flourish and a small, hopeful smile. “But the Prince made a remedy from them nonetheless. And when he swallowed the mixture and opened his eyes, he found that was the size that a human should be. And he would grow to become the best King his people had ever known.”

 _‘I like that story,’_   Vicchan crooned, and a tongue darted from behind his slender teeth to scent the air around the sticky ball of herbs and medicinal plants. _‘Let’s try it, Yuuri! Maybe this time-!’_ Vicchan’s thought came to an abrupt stop, almost jarring Yuuri in the absence of its conclusion.

Yuuri smoothed his free hand over Vicchan’s forehead, over his ears and neck. His chest was aching.

 _‘Maybe this time, Vicchan,’_   Yuuri agreed with gentle warmth, and Vicchan carefully extended his tongue fully, taking the ball from Yuuri’s fingers and into his mouth. Yuuri reached for his own gauze package, unwrapping the twine and taking the sticky remedy between his teeth. _‘Together. Three, two, one-’_

 _‘Hmm,’_   Vicchan’s eyes fluttered a little as he worked the sphere over, considering the flavour. Yuuri could see his throat shift as he swallowed, and forced his own throat to work around the sticky-sweet, sickly-sour, earthy-brown mixture. Vicchan snorted gently. _‘... yuck.’_

Yuuri buried a faintly amused smile into the back of his hand as Vicchan continued to mutter over the aftertaste. And he waited.

The moment grew, paused, lengthened. Vicchan slowly became tense, his muscles quivering under Yuuri’s touch. Yuuri held his breath, painfully hoping. _Maybe this time._

Another second, another quiver, another moment.

And nothing happened.

And it hurt. Yuuri’s eyes were burning, his stomach writhing around the disgustingly false remedy. It seemed that every solution they found, every hope that they built up in their minds, inevitably led to this crushing moment when those hopes were dashed – and they _hurt_.

He should know better by now. Yuuri should have known better than to hope that this time could be different.

It had been three years since Vicchan had hatched for Yuuri, a warm bronze egg in a straw nest from the nursery, and their first few weeks together had been nothing short of idyllic. Under Yuuri’s love and care, Vicchan had grown from the size of a small cat to the size of a wild goat, a well-bred hunting dog, a domestic pig, a working pony, a modest stallion-

But then he had stopped. And no one could figure out why.

At first the physicians had waved it off as pubescent troubles, nothing more than a hiccup in his rapid growth – but when the weeks stretched into months, as Vicchan remained a stubborn five-foot-eight. And then, the whispers started.

Talks of Yuuri’s upcoming mentorship slipped away. His place in the central hall – where the city’s most prestigious citizens met for banquets and meetings and ordinary meals – drifted further and further into shadows, away from view of the raised dais reserved for the most honoured riders. A dragon’s egg hatched only once every year, if that, and Yuuri could feel the eyes of the acolytes – the hopeful unhatched, waiting for an egg that might crack for them – piercing him as he walked through the halls of the city.

 _If it had hatched for_ me, Yuuri could imagine them saying. _If I had been its rider, if it hadn’t been_ him-

Yuuri had fast become the joke of the city, the dragon rider who would never ride a dragon. Dreams of soaring about the world and saving provincial villages from their demons, as his village had been saved so long ago, soon fell into dreams of finding a cure, of finding the _reason_ why Yuuri had failed his dragon so completely.

The massive chamber Yuuri had been given was designed for a beast that was twenty meters tall and four times as long, not the piteously small creature Yuuri had cursed. The training grounds at the far endof his ward were reserved for fully-grown dragons, dragons who could carry their rider, who could _fly_ -

 _‘It didn’t work,’_   Vicchan whispered. Yuuri opened his eyes from where they had subconsciously fallen shut – if he couldn’t see, maybe he could pretend that everything had worked out after all – and he wiped away a stray tear that had squeezed out despite his efforts.

“No,” Yuuri confirmed, and his chest squeezed at the final confirmation of what he had feared. _‘It didn’t.’_

Vicchan snorted, his head pulling back and tossing a little as if in denial. Yuuri watched him silently, watched as Vicchan drew away and stood and paced angrily across the stone of the chamber, raked his claws into the ground as his mind-touch distorted into a cloud of dismay and frustrated anger. Yuuri watched his dragon throw the closest thing to a tantrum that he had seen in weeks, and pulled his knees to his chest in a shallow attempt at comfort.

Vicchan’s energy faded like the dying embers of a fire as fatigue and resignation overcame them both. And Vicchan paused, crouched with his eyes turned away, before he reached tentatively out to brush against his rider’s mind.

 _‘… I’m sorry I can’t grow big like the other dragons, Yuuri,’_   Vicchan’s mind-voice was unusually quiet, an apologetic whisper – and a thrill of guilt lurched through Yuuri, a visceral sickening reaction at the thought that Vicchan might blame himself.

“No, _no,_ Vicchan, this isn’t your fault!” Yuuri gasped from the shock of it, and he pushed himself forward to the edge of his sitting rock as he rushed to reassure his best and closest friend. “Vicchan, you’re _wonderful_. You have nothing to apologise for. I – I’m the one who should-” Yuuri’s throat closed over, and the words vanished. Dipping his head forward and down, hiding his eyes behind a curtain of dark hair, Yuuri tried to continue soundlessly, _‘I’m the one who should …’_

It was him, it _had_ to be him. There hadn’t been a dragon as small as Vicchan in recorded history. Yuuri had traced Vicchan’s lineage as far as he could, had taken hairs and scales and tiny feathers from Vicchan's tail to test against the substances Morooka kept in his shelves – but even beyond that, some part of Yuuri _knew_ that it was him that was the problem.

A touch startled Yuuri, and his head swung up to see Vicchan standing before him, his eyes warm and accepting and everything Yuuri didn’t deserve. Vicchan’s neck curled gently, his head coming to rest about Yuuri’s shoulder and back, and the chest of the golden-brown dragon began to purr gently, comfortingly.

 _‘We’ll find it, Yuuri, don’t worry!’_   Vicchan’s voice rang optimistically in Yuuri’s mind, and Yuuri swallowed back a sob as he raised his arms to cradle Vicchan’s neck, and press his face into the hollow behind Vicchan’s jaw. _‘I know we will.’_

Standing at the edge of the overgrown foliage that would have been Vicchan’s nest if he were big enough, beneath the open-air circle that would have been Vicchan’s freedom if he could fly, Yuuri poured every scrap of love that he had into their intangible bond, and hoped that one day he would wake to find that this had been enough.

 

* * *

 

Words could not describe how little Yuuri wanted to be at this banquet.

“ _It’s customary!_ ” Acolyte Minami had announced in that frustratingly naïve way that he did, bouncing on the heels of his feet and beaming through Yuuri’s doors to the gapingly empty chamber behind him. “ _All the riders have to be there! You_ have _to come!_ ”

Hours later, and Yuuri was still sighing as he squirmed in his crisp, untested leather armour.

The banquet hall was massive, large enough to fit two fully-grown dragons with room to spare, and it felt even larger still for the open-air ceiling that bracketed a deep night sky. The endless diamond stars were broken only by the shifting silhouettes of dragons’ heads, crouched at the edges of the hall and peering down as their riders took seats in the hall below.

The hall itself had been carved to be long and tall, as wide as it was deep, and boasted rich red-stone walls with hanging tapestries in the style of the southern kings. It could seat several hundred at any time, almost a thousand if extra tables were dragged in from the wings, and it was the largest interior room in the entire city. It was a place of celebration, a place for remorse and remembrance, and a place where the highest ranked occupants of the city – those who dedicated their lives to the upkeep of the dragons, be they bonded riders or not – could gather.

The hall was full tonight, with the two-dozen riders still stationed in the city, the hundreds of acolytes who tended to the riders and hoped to join them, the officials and ambassadors and visiting nobles who could spare the time to join the celebration. There was a new rider at the table, a face Yuuri didn’t recognise – tanned, young, and delighted with the excitement of an egg that was just beginning to hatch for them. From where he was sitting just a little further down, Yuuri’s eyes lingered, and lingered – and then finally turned away.

As a bonded rider of over three years, Yuuri was entitled to a seat at the front of the banquet hall, along the table beneath the raised dais that every acolyte in the room watched with envious eyes. But as _Vicchan’s_ rider, Yuuri was entitled to a seat at the furthermost corner of this table, in a dimly shadowed setting that pressed against the wall and gave Yuuri the illusion of obscurity.

And he needed it. Yuuri’s eyes weren’t burning, not anymore, but nothing could hide the red puffiness that revealed that he had been crying. Or, more accurately, sobbing – full bodied, lung wrenching sobs when he had finally managed a moment away from the young, tenderhearted Vicchan.

Months of translation, of patiently collecting ingredients, of hoping, and wishing, and waiting – all of it was for nothing.

Words could not describe how little Yuuri wanted to be at this banquet.

_Thump–thump–thump._

Heavy, rhythmic blows resonated about the room, a call to attention as a short, stout man rose from his seat in the centre of the dais. The burbling noise of the hall settled into restless anticipation. Yuuri turned reluctantly in his seat, and watched as the city’s oldest dragon rider began to speak.

“Congratulations!” Grand Rider Feltsman voice was noticeably coarse, his balding hair curling around a severe face as he shouted into the massive space. “Congratulations, to our six most honoured riders! To our _Prix_ , who yesterday, saved the northern farmlands from an unexpected, and ferocious earthquake!”

An approving cheer rose through the room, sturdy cups banging against long wooden tables alongside hollers from the men and pitched cheers from the women. Yuuri remained silent, and unmoving.

“Had the power and magic of our _Prix_ not been there today!” Grand Rider Feltsman’s voice rang through every corner of the room, despite the excited noise that hadn’t quite died down. “The harvest would have failed! In fact, it was through the unparalleled efforts, of First Rider Viktor Nikiforov-!”

And Feltsman’s following words were drowned, lost as another roar of approval rose through the room. Yuuri found his tired eyes drawn almost against his will to the object of this celebration, the painfully familiar man rising from the seat at Feltsman’s right elbow.

Viktor Nikiforov had aged beautifully.

His long hair shone silver under the white-yellow glint of magelight. His armour was tastefully weathered, a rustic leather that made him seem world-weary and experienced. His face had matured from the prodigious teenager he had once been, into a pale, fearless man, and one of the most illustrious dragon riders of their time.

Viktor Nikiforov’s magical strength was unparalleled, his skill with weapons legendary, and his bond with his stunning dragon – _Makkachin,_ Yuuri thought quietly – one of the deepest bonds seen since the formation of the city. It was understood that he would be taking Feltsman’s place as the leader of their city, when the old rider finally stepped down.

He had been Yuuri’s hero, growing up. He had saved Yuuri’s _life_.

And he didn’t remember Yuuri at _all_.

“Thank you, Yakov,” Viktor’s voice wasn’t quite a shout, it was entirely too smooth and controlled for _that_. But Viktor had never needed to raise his voice to be heard, not even for an uncommonly large crowd such as this. “Today’s victory doesn’t just belong to me – but to all of us, and all of _you!_ ” Viktor raised a graceful hand, gesturing to the five members of his party, the _Prix,_ and then to the crowd, who clapped and hollered appreciatively. “Thank you, everyone, for your support! We could have never achieved victory, if it hadn’t been for the hard work of the people of this city!”

Viktor’s face was familiar, his hair was familiar, but more than anything, his _words_ were familiar. Yuuri had heard them after every victory, without fail. The essence of them never changed, not in the five years since Viktor had taken his seat as the youngest First Rider in history – but somehow, the crowds lapped them up all the same.

And when the cheers died down, Viktor beamed his ever-familiar smile for the audience.

“And now – with Vakov’s permission-” Viktor turned, to receive a small, put-upon nod from the Grand Rider. “Let the banquet begin!” The hall broke into uproarious applause as servers began to pass through small side doors, laden with platters and enthusiastically welcomed by the tables as they approached. Viktor took his seat with a fixed smile, and Yuuri watched as he turned to speak with his fellow _Prix_ rider, Christophe. Laughing, reaching for a cup, each movement graceful and deliberate-

“Pa _thetic_ ,” a voice snorted from behind him.

Yuuri's heart leapt into his throat.

Flinching away from the dazzling sight that Viktor made – away from the dais, away from the _Prix_ – Yuuri found none other than Yuri Plisetsky sitting petulantly beside him, back-to-front on the wooden bench and with his elbows sloppily braced back against the table.

Yuri’s armour was as untouched and untested as Yuuri’s was.

“I don’t know why Yakov keeps him around,” Yuri continued, glaring up the man in question and tossing his head back so that tips of his yellow-blond hair brushed the light pads of his shoulders. “He’s a good rider, sure. But if he doesn’t shake things up every now then, I’m going to throw up in his lap out of sheer _boredom_.”

Yuuri almost twitched at the implied slight against his distant childhood idol – but, despite the rebuke aching at the seat of his tongue, said nothing.

“Hmph,” Yuri finally turned from where he had been eyeing the raised table to give Yuuri a long side-eye that was equal parts suspicion and contempt. “And you’re no fun, either. Come on, piggy, what have you been up to? You’re not still bothering Morooka, are you?”

Yuuri tensed defensively. He _didn’t want to be here-_

“Maybe,” he admitted with a throat sore from tears and failed remedies, and the mocking laugh of Jean-Jacques taunted him from his memories. ‘ _Let me know when they start working!’_

“Hah, _really?_ ” Yuri said incredulously, and Yuuri could hear the sneer on his face, the mocking laughter in his eyes. “How much longer are you gonna do _that_ for? Why don’t you just get over it already? It’s embarrassing, watching you try like this, just give up!”

It wasn't anything Yuuri hadn’t heard before. But fresh on the tails of yet another failure, after the hope, the fall, the crushing defeat– it was too much.

His eyes were blurring. Yuuri gritted his teeth and stared _hard_ at the wood before him, pushing against the angry tears that were threatening to overwhelm his vision.

“Go away,” Yuuri managed through the tightness in his throat. The words were lost in the noise of the banquet as it thrived around them.

“Huh? Speak up, piggy, I can’t hear you,” Yuri sounded bored. As if resigning Vicchan to life as an outcast was nothing _unusual_ -

“I said, _go away,_ Yuri!” Yuuri finally snapped, his words a hoarse gasp, his head whipping up to glare at Yuri through the pathetic red heat of tears that blurred his vision. “I don’t want to hear this! I don’t – I don’t _need_ to hear this right now, not from _you_ , anyway! It’s not like _you’re_ a real dragon rider either-”

 _Oops_.

Yuri’s face tightened from lazy indifference to sharp, bitter anger.

“Fuck you, Katsuki,” he spat shortly, before pushing himself from the table in a violent motion and storming into the loose crowd gathered about the centre of the dragon rider’s table. His slight body – the body of a fifteen-year-old boy, the body of a child too young to fight, the body of a rider whose dragon had hatched when he was only _ten years old_ – vanished out of sight.

Yuri might have been young, he might have been the same age as Viktor had been when he took to the skies for battle – but the rules had changed since then, children weren't allowed on active duty, not any more. And young, hot-headed Yuri suffered for it, just as Yuuri suffered himself.

Yuuri closed his eyes, lowering his head until it was buried in both hands and he was shielded from the world.

He shouldn’t have come. No one would have noticed Yuuri’s absence, but at least he might have avoided the bone-deep migraine that was building in the corners of his temple, the sharpness of Yuri’s anger as Yuuri lashed out at him, the guilt that was twisting in his stomach.

He shouldn’t have come.

The noise around him was building, swelling, ebbing, and bursting into laughter, with small localised cheers and voices shouting out-

Yuuri dragged his fingers over his sore eyes, his palms over his cheeks and nose. He looked out over his fingertips to see a well-dressed server sliding platters of food onto the table to Yuuri’s left, ostensibly for a pair of _real_ dragon riders that were surrounded by a throng of acolytes and attendants, laughing and proud and unashamed, and cheering for the unfamiliar tanned face that was beaming above fresh rider leathers.

And then, the server set down three carafes of wine in tall silver pitchers, and the closest was only just beyond Yuuri’s reach.

It was no effort at all to stand and snatch the pitcher away before any of the crowd could notice.

The first wash of sour-sweet liquid loosened the tightness of Yuuri’s throat. The second dampened the sick guilt in Yuuri’s stomach. The third calmed the heat of his migraine.

Yuuri didn’t remember the fourth.

 

* * *

 

The curling plateau of hot springs hidden in the far reaches of the city was Yuuri’s favourite thing about living in the hollow of a caldera.

As Yuuri had learned in his first days as an acolyte, the dragon's sprawling subterranean city had been carved into the bones of the long-dormant volcano more than a thousand years ago, in the wake of a devastating war that ultimately led to the majority of riders abstaining from their respective countries and taking an oath of neutrality. The centrally located volcano, providing an impressively large stretch of rich clay and parched cliffs, had been the perfect compromise on providing protection for as far across the continent as the dragons could fly, while still abstaining from dangerous political affiliations. Every scrap of volcanic rock had been spelled by the city’s first inhabitants to be impervious to damage at the hands of dragons - and then, under a treaty that still held up to this day, construction had begun.

Such a spellcrafting masterpiece - a spell that protected the earth from a dragon's weight, a spell traditionally performed only by stonemages for local benefit - had been a both the saving grace of the dragon-beset city, and also an aesthetic relief. The landscape of the caldera, preserved eternally by the ancient spell, was stunning; the earth was baked golden and brown, with thick bristles and scruff peeking through deep mud-cracks, spindly brooks winding between thin pale trees, and throughout it all, a constant, almost-thick mist that rose through fissures in the earth and shrouded the terrain in ever-shifting clouds. 

The volcano was warm – not just from the sun, but also from the natural heat of the earth, the heady sulphuric stench that Yuuri had long since adjusted to, and the gently steaming hot pools that were scattered about the plains. The smallest pools were no larger than a hand, a tiny puddle of wet earth that bubbled and popped luxuriously slowly. There were a few pools that were knee-deep, some murky from natural minerals and mud, some a sickly pale green that was acidic to touch.

And then there were pools that were deep and broad and clear enough that a human – or perhaps a  very small dragon – could bathe in them. Those were Yuuri’s favourite ones.

The nature of the city itself meant that the centre of the caldera was a noticeable patchwork of half-open rooms and buildings, a few square acres of developed land that had been shaped into stone buildings rising no more than a handful of metres above the ground. The five wings of the city spread from the centre in long corridors beneath the surface, and emerged irregularly as a tunnel opening, a half-submerged building, or perhaps a healthy ventilation shaft for the room below.

And then, of course, there were the sunpits – sudden sinking gaps in the crisp earth that a dragon, massive and warm and throbbing with energy, might burst from at any moment. Dotted about the caldera, many of the massive openings were obscured by a copse of short trees, or hidden behind a shallow cliff of natural earth.

Yuuri’s sunpit opened to a peak in the terrain, a sharp jut of earth that would have made a perfect perch for a grown dragon to take in the sights. Yuuri’s sunpit hadn’t been used since its previous owners, a deep emerald dragon and his proud rider, had been permanently relocated to a far eastern outpost little more than a decade ago. But, at the rear of the chamber, so unused they had almost been forgotten, there were steps.

Spindly steps, that spun sharply in a dizzy spiral and drove a path from the far reach of Yuuri’s chambers up into the warm clearing above. If Vicchan tucked his wings, and kept his neck extended for balance, he could climb them, too.

Those steps were the only reason Yuuri hadn’t gone _insane_.

He didn’t take them every morning. But some mornings, when light was peeking through the sunpit and beginning to heat the air of Yuuri’s chambers, he would grow restless. It was one of the crueller features of his room, that he should always be able to see the sky – deep blue, or pale and cold, or set alight with sweeping clouds in the wash of sunset – but never be able to touch it. Yuuri couldn’t ride Vicchan; Vicchan couldn’t fly, even without Yuuri’s weight dragging him down.

So, Yuuri did the next best thing.

 

* * *

 

The morning after the banquet, Yuuri woke to see wisps of geothermic steam curling through the edges of the sunpit, tempting him. They reminded him of the springs that his family had tended, the evenings Yuuri would spend soaking with his father as biting mountain air settled around them. The memory was sharp, and vivid. It hurt. Yuuri closed his eyes tightly, drawing in a slow breath.

Today was going to be one of _those_ days.

Then Yuuri made the mistake of rolling onto his side, and immediately gasped as white pain shot through his temples and neck.

Oh gods, today was going to be one of _those days_.

Yuuri groaned into his pillow. At least he had made it back to his room. The last time he had gotten into the wine, drunken Yuuri hadn’t been so kind as to deliver him to his own bed. His shameful walk from the acolytes’ quarters during the bustling mid-morning rush had been excruciating. Yuuri curled into his knees in a facsimile of comfort-

And oh _,_ gods _,_ his legs were _killing_ him. What had _happened_ last night? The last thing he remembered was dismissing Yuri, and reaching for a drink – and then nothing.

He hadn’t exactly been in the shelter of his private quarters, either. He had been at a celebratory banquet, in front of every rider and acolyte and person of importance in the city.

Yuuri whined pathetically. Fisted his pillow, groaned again, and then slowly, painfully, pushed himself upright.

Vicchan was curled at the foot of Yuuri’s bed, his wings tucked over his snout and his tail twitching slowly – and Yuuri remembered all over again the failure that he had become in caring for his companion. Yuuri watched Vicchan for a lingering, self-pitying moment, before moving to the edge of his bed and gripping his knees as the world spun.

He couldn’t stay here. Not here, in the stained clothes he had worn under now-discarded armour, in a bed that smelled faintly of wine and salt, in a room that had so many emotions and failures and memories embedded in it.

“Vicchan,” Yuuri said gently, and the snoring heap at the foot of Yuuri’s bed yawned in faux-sleep, before ignoring him.

Yuuri would have rolled his eyes if they hadn’t already felt like they were rolling in his head.

 _‘Wake up, Vicchan,’_ Yuuri murmured into his friend’s mind. _‘We’re going bathing.’_

And Vicchan’s eyes snapped open. He didn’t leave Yuuri’s chambers often, preferring to sleep and groom and play in his overgrown, oversized nest – but bathing, Vicchan _loved_. Sleep could wait.

Yuuri sighed in relief as Vicchan bounded from the bed, and carefully pushed himself to almost-steady feet. The sting of vertigo was already fading, just from seeing the joy lighting Vicchan’s eyes. Carefully, Yuuri picked out a well-worn bag from its hook in his standing dresser, before running a hand along Vicchan’s shoulders as he passed and gently guiding him towards the descending staircase.

Vicchan was clumsy with excitement, stumbling and dancing happily as they crossed the large stone chamber towards the alcove of stone that concealed the once-forgotten stairs from plain view.

If they took these stairs to the open plain and then climbed down the almost-steep hill, if they were to pick their way past a small forest of gorse and along a valley of juniper and saltbushes, if they took a pleasently warm walk that had them skirting about another rider’s sunpit and towards the rise of a cliff overlooking a messy plain – then they would find the best knot of natural hot springs to be found in the caldera.

The steaming pools were cradled on three sides by middling-height cliffs, with a healthy spread of trees and shrubs and wind-smoothed rocks that were perfect for sunbathing. There was a trickle of sulphuric steam rising from distant vents, which wafted over the hot springs at the bidding of gentle wind currents. The earth was a little damper here, not as sun-baked as the rest of the plain was, and Yuuri loved slipping his boots away to squirm his toes in the soft dirt and hints of feathery grass.

At this time of day the sun was directly overhead, providing blissful heat to open spaces, and casting cold shadows under the arms of willing trees.

Yuuri and Vicchan _loved_ it here.

Yuuri’s head was still pounding, his legs trembling a little from exertion – but the fresh air, a curious mix of geothermic heat and fresh mountain wind, was helping.

 _‘Can I?’_   Vicchan was squirming with anticipation, his haunches twisting with energy. Yuuri smiled, stroked the peak of Vicchan’s brow, and nodded.

 _‘Off you go,’_   Yuuri said silently. The moment had Yuuri spoken, Vicchan was bounding ahead of him and leaping into the nearest clear-water pool, letting the hot water sooth over his wings and back. His bond was a pulsing, contented warmth in the corner of Yuuri’s mind, and Yuuri let a fond smile emerge as he walked to his usual roost and began to unpack the bag he had carried with him.

The bag was familiar and worn in the way Yuuri’s armour had never been. There was a pocket for Yuuri’s clothes, a tumble of comfortable tunics and robes that Yuuri could wear when he didn't need to dress for official occasions. There was a pocket of tonics and brushes, with pots of oil that Yuuri would spread into Vicchan’s scales when he had finished playing in the water. There was even a pocket with snacks and sweet, dried meats wrapped in spell-preserving cloth, food that was appropriate for Yuuri and Vicchan both.

Taking a strip of dried meat, Yuuri forced himself to eat through the thick nausea of last night. His hands worked at the laces of the shirt he wore as he chewed, and he stepped toward his preferred pool under the leaves of a sheltering olive tree.

It wasn’t his family’s _onsen_ , but it was close, and his first step into the comforting warmth almost felt like coming home. Yuuri sighed, the muscles of his shoulders and thighs finally softening, and he settled back to nurse his hangover in warm, soft peace.

And not five minutes later, Viktor Nikiforov ruined _everything_.

 

* * *

 

At first, Yuuri thought nothing of the rhythmic _whumphs_ that came from the south, growing in strength and sound. This was, after all, a dragon city. Of _course_ there were going to be dragons.

But when the _whumphs_ grew closer, when they started to slow, when the leaves of his sheltering olive tree rustled under strong gusts of air, Yuuri finally raised his head from where it had been pillowed on his arms at the edge of the spring.

Wings. They were the first thing Yuuri saw, a pair massive stretching wings that were backlit by the sun. They were stretched taut from the effort to control the dragon’s descent – and they were a sickeningly familiar shade of golden brown, just a shade darker than Vicchan’s own.

Makkachin.

It was an unusual feeling, having his veins turn to ice while submerged in steaming warm water. Yuuri slid a little further into the pool as his knees turned weak, and the surface of the spring rippled under the current of Makkachin’s wings.

Vicchan was still playing, still splashing in the water. Yuuri was naked, his clothes folded on a stone just out of reach. And Viktor was riding Makkachin, kneeling at the hollow behind her neck and bracing against one spine with a gentle hand.

He couldn’t be here. He couldn’t. Not after everything. Yuuri couldn’t handle _this_ , too, not after _everything-_

Yuuri felt the landing, felt the way the earth shuddered to accommodate Makkachin’s massive weight. He ducked further into the pool, until his chin was skimming the surface, and prayed uselessly that he hadn’t been seen.

It was with the sickest sense of déjà vu that Yuuri watched Viktor descend from Makkachin’s shoulder, watched as his tousled silver ponytail danced over his shoulders, watched as he stroked Makkachin’s snout with a gloved hand before-

Noticing Vicchan.

“Oh, he’s so _small!_ ” Viktor exclaimed.

The words were like a suckering punch to the diaphragm and a knee to the groin all at once. Yuuri’s lungs squeezed with painful, weak hopelessness.

Not this too. Not after _everything_.

“He looks just like Makkachin did when she was a fledgling! Isn’t that _precious_ , Makkachin, look!” Viktor continued, a relentless tide of enthusiasm and cutting words. Yuuri shrank back further, his trembling lips sinking under the water, and Vicchan – who understood the common tongue almost as well as he understood Yuuri’s native language – was drawing back too, having paused in his playful swim when Viktor first spoke.

“This is so exciting!” Viktor was _still speaking_ , and Yuuri was blinking away tears, and- “Yuuri – Yuuri, what are you doing over there?”

 _Melting_ , Yuuri wanted to answer. _This is an acidic hot pool, and I am melting into nothingness_.

“Yuu-ri,” Viktor was laughing – who _laughs_ like that, after saying something so cruel – and then Viktor was approaching, and Yuuri was _naked_ -

“Viktor-sa- uh, Viktor, Nikiforov … sir,” Yuuri stammered, his face flushing from the heat, from the shame, from the way that Viktor was smiling at him. “What – what are you doing … here?”

Viktor stopped just a few metres from the edge of the pool - and suddenly, he had the same smile on his face that he had worn at the banquet, a smile that was teeth and dimples, but-

Didn’t touch his eyes.

“Yuuri,” Viktor said with another laugh. Viktor laughed far too easily- “Starting from today, I’m going to be your mentor!”

Yuuri gaped, and gaped, and gaped, and his head was rushing and spinning all at once, and the world was falling away.

And then Viktor winked.

 _Today was going to be one of_ those _days._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to send out a huge thank you to Suzurei and Kou for their help with this chapter <3 Thank you for the motivation and the advice! 
> 
> Unfortunately, I decided to shift a lot of what I had written for chapter two into this chapter, so I have almost no buffer to speak of. However, I do have a solid outline written up, so it shouldn't take me too long to get the next chapter out. 
> 
> Thank you very much for reading, and also for the kudos and comments from last chapter! Each and every one of them had me smiling and covering my face with happiness <3


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